Incentive issues and solution mechanisms for knowledge transfer with enterprise 2.0 technologies: A game-theoretic approach

Abstract

Firms increasingly use enterprise social media for knowledge activities such as knowledge transfer. In an enterprise setting, it is often the case that the receiver of transferred knowledge will make decisions that have ramifications for the knowledge sender. Using a game-theoretic approach, this paper studies the consequences when a knowledge sender has incentive to transfer knowledge strategically and the mechanisms that can be designed to deter such strategic behavior. We find that knowledge transfer may fail when senders transfer knowledge strategically, but knowledge receivers can design a probabilistic auditing mechanism to ensure truthful knowledge transfer. Our results suggest that a knowledge receiver's own knowledge can facilitate truthful knowledge transfer, but the receiver should not let her own knowledge be known by the sender. This research contributes to the knowledge management literature, and has interesting implications for the adoption and use of enterprise social media. © 2014 IEEE.